John Wayne Gacy rapped & killed 33 boys


A.P.A. Publishes a New Study: 1998
Not All Pedophile Relationships are Harmful
The American Psychological Association did not denounce the positions advanced within the that journal. In fact, just recently, the A.P.A. published a new, major study (2) written by one of those same Journal of Homosexuality writers.
This latest article appears in the A.P.A.'s own prestigious Psychological Bulletin. It provides an overview of all the research studying the harm resulting from childhood sexual abuse.
The authors' conclusion? That childhood sexual abuse is on average, only slightly associated with psychological harm--and that the harm may not be due to the sexual experience, but to the negative family factors in the children's backgrounds. When the sexual contact is not coerced, especially when it is experienced by a boy and is remembered positively, it may not be harmful at all.
The authors of the article propose that psychologists stop using judgmental terms like "child abuse," "molestation," and "victims," using instead neutral, value-free terms like "adult-child sex." Similarly, they say we should not talk about the "the severity of the abuse," but instead refer to "the level of sexual intimacy."
The authors conclude that behavior which psychotherapists commonly term "abuse" may only constitute a violation of social norms. And science, they say, should separate itself from social-moral terminology. Religion and society, these writers argue, are free to judge behavior as they wish...but psychiatry should evaluate behavior by its own set of standards.
In fact, the authors of the Psychological Bulletin article propose what they consider may be a better way of understanding pedophilia: that it may only be "abuse" if the child feels bad about the relationship. They are in effect suggesting a repetition of the steps by which homosexuality was normalized. In its first step toward removing homosexuality from the Diagnostic Manual, the A.P.A. said the condition was normal as long as the person did not feel bad about it.
Few laymen are aware that the American Psychiatric Association recently redefined the criteria for pedophilia. According to the latest diagnostic manual (DSM--IV), a person no longer has a psychological disorder simply because he molests children. To be diagnosed as disordered, now he must also feel anxious about the molestation, or be impaired in his work or social relationships. Thus the A.P.A. has left room for the "psychologically normal" pedophile.